Even as a child, before higher education supplied me with professional terms and the industry vocabulary, I could smell poor translation from miles away. Perhaps it was a matter of being bilingual and, between Polish and English, absorbing such different linguistic constructions; perhaps it was just an unhealthy amount of books I consumed (I was not the popular kid) that gave me a nagging awareness of odd sentence constructions, comparisons or proverbs that made no cultural sense, or cringe-worthy descriptions I couldn’t chalk up to the original author’s decisions. Suffice to say I would scream WHY DID YOU DO THAT, THIS IS ABSURD over many a book, movie, or video game.

They say it’s important to do what you love for a living. I made a living doing something my brain does anyway – analyze, review, and improve the content that underwent a transition from one language to the other. Translation? Machines have already replaced us to a great extent in that regard; personally, I find computational linguistics beyond fascinating, but translation is just step one of a rather sophisticated process (unless, of course, cultural propriety is not necessary, because all you wanted was to get your birth certificate in another language). I like to think that in the localization journey, the machines are able to make the necessary start in the Shire, but it takes humans to reach Mordor and reforge translation into transcreation.

As a localization producer specializing in gaming and digital media, I make sure both linguistic and cultural adaptation process becomes smooth and thorough — so that your product can be enjoyed to its fullest in every corner of the world.